I need an example of a badly written antagonist...
- Thread starter triggrhappy94
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That's a tall order.
You're unlikely to ever find a villain who truly does things for no reason. Writing something like that wouldn't be bad writing so much as absurd writing. At the very least, a villain wants to do something simply because they can. And I think it's pretty unreasonable to assume that villains aren't justified if they don't have some succinct, identifiable justification in their history. Look at the Joker from The Dark Knight if you want a great character with an explicit lack of clear motivation.
The problem here is that "antagonist" is nothing but a descriptor for someone opposing a protagonist/protagonists. They might be one-dimensional (this is not necessarily always a bad thing) or lack clear motivation, but the only way they could be a "bad" antagonist would be not to be one at all. And even then, that can be interesting in itself, creating antiheroes and failed villains.
What your search eventually becomes is one for characters who are written badly and happen to be cast as antagonists, and it's virtually impossible to give any hard and fast rules on what makes bad writing. Just about anything you think usually leads to bad writing can be (and, in almost every case, has been) written brilliantly by more capable hands.
TL;DR: Your search is doomed. The only way for an antagonist to be written badly, aside from just being a badly written character who happens to be an antagonist, is for them not to actually be an antagonist.
You're unlikely to ever find a villain who truly does things for no reason. Writing something like that wouldn't be bad writing so much as absurd writing. At the very least, a villain wants to do something simply because they can. And I think it's pretty unreasonable to assume that villains aren't justified if they don't have some succinct, identifiable justification in their history. Look at the Joker from The Dark Knight if you want a great character with an explicit lack of clear motivation.
The problem here is that "antagonist" is nothing but a descriptor for someone opposing a protagonist/protagonists. They might be one-dimensional (this is not necessarily always a bad thing) or lack clear motivation, but the only way they could be a "bad" antagonist would be not to be one at all. And even then, that can be interesting in itself, creating antiheroes and failed villains.
What your search eventually becomes is one for characters who are written badly and happen to be cast as antagonists, and it's virtually impossible to give any hard and fast rules on what makes bad writing. Just about anything you think usually leads to bad writing can be (and, in almost every case, has been) written brilliantly by more capable hands.
TL;DR: Your search is doomed. The only way for an antagonist to be written badly, aside from just being a badly written character who happens to be an antagonist, is for them not to actually be an antagonist.
Read much ado about nothing by Shakespeare.The bad guy literally says he's evil because he has to be at the beginning.
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First off, I tip my hat to you for your dissemination of a plot that I admittedly had difficulty understanding. I still don't think there's any depth to Mercer (or the virus that thinks it's Mercer) as a villain. I just don't see "petty revenge and cowardice" translating to readily murdering hundreds of thousands of innocents. If the virus, while it thought it was Mercer, had at least hesitated at first, before becoming accustomed to and eventually loving the juicy act of murder, I might have found it less ridiculous.JdaS said:
If I remember right, killing innocent people isn't really part of the game, you fight against infected people and the military, while absorbing people who have information regarding who and what you areHarry Mason said:
General Shepherd from Modern Warfare 2, though his "motivation" could easily be classified as going kookoo. He is the entire reason that WW3 is currently ongoing in fictional parallel universe #79,280,361. Were it not for him sending a CIA operative to work for a terrorists psycho boss, there would be no convenient corpse for the Ruskies to hold up as justification to go into warhawk massacre mode and invade the entire world with a military that I can only assume to have been supplied by a wizard, given the enormous commitment of supplies that invading the ENTIRE WORLD would cost.
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But wasn't the man responsible (Zakhaev) for that already dead? Sure Makarov was out there, but I have no idea what he specifically did in relation to that incident. All I knew going in was that he was a weapons dealer and such, though I guess I could fill in the dots from there. But if his neutralization was so important, and Shepherd was able to put one of his operatives that close, why didn't I get the option to just shoot him and then make a standard Micheal Bay escape from his cronies?artanis_neravar said:
Sorry if it's already been posted but some of the guys in here might be worth a look at.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForTheEvulz
That's the trope for villains who're villains for fun of it. They usually aren't considered examples of good character design (note the usually).
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForTheEvulz
That's the trope for villains who're villains for fun of it. They usually aren't considered examples of good character design (note the usually).
I agree Kefka's motive were shitty (which is why I'd agree with Sephiroth's motives also being shitty) but I at least found Kefka interesting because of his silly demeanor which gave a bit more depth than the angst they basically poured into Sephiroth.Arehexes said:
I agree with whoever said Darth Vader too, and I feel like most antagonists in an Epic set up are more or less cardboard cutouts. However I feel like what's done with all of the surrounding characters makes all of the difference.
Besides any of that, the worst antagonists I can think of are aliens. Not just aliens from the movie Aliens, but just aliens from anything, it's seriously ridiculous how many stories (good or bad even) rely on aliens being evil.
For the record if you hate Fallout 3 due to having played the first 2 than the part where Eden wants to purify the wasteland came from Fallout 2 when the Enclave had an airbourne version of it. Besides the Enclave has no problem with murdering almost everyone but themselves, they're fanatical and believe they have a right to enherit the world.Pandabearparade said:
Also, you are correct with Autumn, I forgot what his motivation was for a bit ther, thanks for jogging my memory. I'll agree to the fact that he needed fleshing out. The only motivation the character has for killing him is he drove your dad to kill himself, captured and planned to torture you and wants to use the purifier not for anihilation, but a bargening chip for total obediance. Actually that's pretty much enough for a good/neutral character to kill him, the evil character will either kill him due to being a psychopath or join him and become his right hand or something. Although that option would be a stretch considering your character isn't pure humans which to the Enclave means you must be destroyed.
Maybe if the torture scene was longer, enough for him to state his goals, ambitions and reasons for doing so we could have had a better villain other than a would-be-dictator. Although that stupid magic anti-rad shot works, hell it seems anything to do with radiation in Fallout calls for some suspension of disbelief, Fallout 3 didn't start it, Fallout 1 did.
Although I still believe the fact that we know next to nothing about Burke besides the fact that he's shady and menacing is intentional.
But hey, Fallout 3 major villains are all better than Frank "kills shit for giggles" Horrigan. Being a psychopath isn't a personality, it's a trait, but it's pretty much his only trait outside of fanatical loyalty.
One more thing, the GECK, FEV and most other magicly contrived plot devices were in Fallout 1/2 and had the same functions, if you hate them blame the first two games.
That bad guy from the latest Star Trek movie. He was just completely shallow, inconsistent and in no way interesting.
Dr. Robotnik/Eggman.
He goes around turning animals into robots in order to build this huge empire. Why does he want this empire and why does he need to turn animals into robots when he could probably just as capably build regular ones? To this day we have no idea. He also seems to desire the Chaos Emeralds for their power, but again we are left with no idea as to why. We just know that he wants them and that he HATES that hedgehog! The games are great fun (at least up to Adventure 2) but plotline and characterization leave a lot to be desired.
He goes around turning animals into robots in order to build this huge empire. Why does he want this empire and why does he need to turn animals into robots when he could probably just as capably build regular ones? To this day we have no idea. He also seems to desire the Chaos Emeralds for their power, but again we are left with no idea as to why. We just know that he wants them and that he HATES that hedgehog! The games are great fun (at least up to Adventure 2) but plotline and characterization leave a lot to be desired.
Unless I missed it... I can't believe no one mentioned this guy, even after a Barry Pepper name-drop. I'll give you a hint.
While you were still learning how to spell your name, he was being trained to conquer galaxies!
Terl, from Battlefield Earth.
Alternately... pretty much any Bond villain. They've all been pretty poorly written. Especially Blofeld, who has already been mentioned in this topic a few times. My personal least favorite though is Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies. Y'know... the dude who wanted to start a war with China so he could sell more newspapers... or something...
I get that Carver was supposed to be kind of like Hans Gruber from Die Hard in terms of motivation and plan execution... but Hans, in my opinion, was better characterized. I felt that by the end of the film I knew far more about Hans than I knew about Elliot at the end of Tomorrow Never Dies.
While you were still learning how to spell your name, he was being trained to conquer galaxies!
Terl, from Battlefield Earth.
Alternately... pretty much any Bond villain. They've all been pretty poorly written. Especially Blofeld, who has already been mentioned in this topic a few times. My personal least favorite though is Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies. Y'know... the dude who wanted to start a war with China so he could sell more newspapers... or something...
I get that Carver was supposed to be kind of like Hans Gruber from Die Hard in terms of motivation and plan execution... but Hans, in my opinion, was better characterized. I felt that by the end of the film I knew far more about Hans than I knew about Elliot at the end of Tomorrow Never Dies.